Background

Fort Collins Club, the choice fitness and recreation center in FoCo has been a long time client and friend of Sage Marketing Group. From a website redesign to ongoing marketing and advertising, watching FCCs growth from courtside has been humbling. In a city saturated with big names like 24 Hour Fitness to a collection of fitness studios and independent gyms, FCC was determined to be the go-to, one-stop spot for group fitness, court sports, aquatics, and everything in between. Through ongoing search engine marketing, we reached thousands month-over-month and incentivized hundreds to sign up as FCC Members.

In the spirit of raising the bar higher, FCC wanted to amplify three new initiatives and gauge their reception in the local community:

Introduce new summer membership pricing to coincide with the fitness schedules and goals of their prospective members

Position FCC’s outdoor pool as the neighborhood spot

Provide parents with a day camp option for their kids to enjoy a fun and fit summer at FCC

Solution

It was all about grip strength and technique to help FCC realize their potential for these three goals. We developed targeted Google search network campaigns and honed in on the subsets of audience personas to the general fitness-minded individual. We identified the suite of key terms and phrases each persona would be most likely to input and developed ads that were not only enticing in message, but educated vs sold the initiative.

So often, advertisers are tempted to position their incentives with a monetary callout – “Starting at $49” or something to that effect. But the reality is, while pricing drives part of the decision making process, we wanted to reinforce FCCs message – that the club would be a member’s home away from home. Because regardless of the three initiatives, building community, would be far more rewarding long term than a one-month trial membership.

Results

The results from the campaigns were exceptional. Within the first month, we reached tens of thousands within the Fort Collins city limits, where 7.93% clicked-through to learn more about each initiative, 4X the category health and fitness industry standard. Summer memberships picked up by nearly 200% and summer day camp sign-ups flooded in by the dozens following campaign start.